Bombay Blues

If someone had asked me if I thought my life would be so different (in every single aspect) 6 months ago, I would’ve laughed, called them dreamers and asked them to go write the script of a K series prime-time drama (sans the bahu and saas). Seriously, my life has felt very much like the complicated plot of a movie/ book over the last six months.

The best part of it? My salvation? It’s got to be my move to the big (bad?) world of Bombay. 

When I say Bombay Blues, I mean it in two ways-

1. Blues as in sad. Like Monday blues. Like it depresses me kinda blues.

Despite the population of 12.4 million, there are times when you feel so very alone, you can’t help but cringe. Every man and woman (and child!) is on a mission every single day. If you’re in their way, they’ll push and shove until you’re moved aside and out of the way. Life moves so quick here you don’t realise how Monday started and how you arrived at Friday. You live life from one taxi to another, from one train to another, from one morning to the other. Never stopping, never skipping a beat.

There are days when I realise that I don’t do anything other than work and commute. That I had zero  social contact with another human being. In those ten minutes between when my head hits the much-sought-for pillow and I actually fall asleep, I realise the impact of the lack of social contact and the sense of loss I feel for it.

And I feel slightly bad.

Just for those ten minutes.

When I wake up the next morning, it’s forgotten and I just get on with it.

     2.Blue- blue as in my favourite colour. As in the colour I associate with mad-happy-grinning. As in the mood that Bombay has me in most of the time.

I’ve always had some of my best memories in Bombay. With a boy I fancied, with crazy girlfriends, with cousins at weddings. But for some reason I didn’t want to live here. Not ‘now’ anyway. I thought if I actually lived here my illusion of Bombay being the city of dreams would be shattered. I kept making excuses- ‘No, no. It’s too hot.’  ‘It’s waaaaaaay too expensive, I’ll move only when I’m making mad-crazy money like the Khans do.’ (ha, dream on)

‘And life has a funny, funny way of helping you out,’ sings Alanis M, and I agree. When I was going through what maybe the most confused and lost time in my life ever, it sent me Bombay. And that too, to work at a super fun place and hang out with some of my most favourite people who live here. I think back now and I’m wondering why the hell I made excuses to not move here.

It’s like being in an amusement park/ circus. You have the crazy-fast-head-is-spinning ride that is everyday life, the freak shows and the clowns, the supremely good street food, the magicians (there’s so much jhol in this city, you can’t help but smile in wonder), the entertainers, the show-offs, the ridiculously good looking people...

And in the middle of it all, when you stand still for one minute, you realise you can be anonymous and still feel like you’re just a part of the madness as everything and everyone around you is. It’s a beautiful, smile-bringing, liberating, welcoming feeling.

In the three short weeks that I’ve been here, Bombay has me wrapped around its little finger. I’m dancing to its beats and I’ve discovered despite the heat, the dirt, the super fast pace, what was previously just a school-crush girl is turning into falling, spiralling helplessly in love affair!